Will Kevin O’Leary’s massive Utah data center actually get built? Don’t count on it, says this energy analyst

A Utah data center proposed by Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary is expected to be massive. The project—called Stratos but also referred to as Wonder Valley—would be 40,000 acres, or roughly double the size of Manhattan. It could consume up to 9 GW of power, which is more than double the entire state’s average electricity use. That is, if it ever gets built. Right now, the reality of a 9 GW Utah data center doesn’t seem all that likely to Olivia Wang, a research analyst at Sightline Climate, an energy transition intelligence firm. Or at least, she says, not “at anything close” to the scale currently being talked about. “There is no precedent for a developer pulling off an off-grid project of this size yet,” Wang says via email, “and the project has none of the building blocks in place that would make us think otherwise.” Sightline Climate has analyzed proposed data center projects previously. The company has more than 1,000 hyperscale data center projects around the world in its pipeli